


Mirror Image

by Whimzlogo



Category: How to Train Your Dragon (Movies)
Genre: Canon Rewrite, Comfort, Gen, Hiccup Horrendous Haddock III & Toothless Friendship, Light Angst, Loneliness, Musing, Toothless wants to get to know the Light Fury, Toothless: Smitten, but not "like that", of a sort
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-08
Updated: 2019-05-08
Packaged: 2020-02-28 16:16:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,104
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18759934
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Whimzlogo/pseuds/Whimzlogo
Summary: Her scales reminded him of the snowy crags of land he journeyed through with his boy a year ago; hid within and drew his musings into. Her eyes were like the sky at day. She looked nothing like him, so why could Toothless swear on his wings that he was looking at a clearer reflection of himself?





	Mirror Image

**Author's Note:**

> The scene up in the tree made me absolutely _ache_ for our Fury boy; that he was, perhaps for the first time ever (for how far back his memory stretches, maybe), seeing another dragon who looked like him. The overhanging detail that there were no other _Night_ Furies besides him really made the scene a gut punch for me. John Powell's soft, sad track as Toothless climbed the tree friggin' wrecked me. I really wish they would have rode with that somber tone instead of portraying him as an infatuated, drooling dog who was instantly in love in the just-for-laughs scene that came directly after.

A prickle traveled up Toothless' head spines and down his neck, beneath the weight and warmth of his saddle's leather. It didn't stop there and touched every last fin on his back, ceasing somewhere past the bumpiness all along the top of his long tail and fizzling out on the tailfin that had been with him since hatching, leaving him with a light, electric feeling seemingly enhanced by the moon above the treetops.

It had been a croon that brought him down here. A soft sound not unlike the kind he was capable, but  _higher_. A sound Hiccup and Astrid had not heard for their limited senses, and Stormfly had very likely ignored; it wasn't as if dragons didn't sound off in these parts as much as their companionable Viking comrades did, and Berk was a village that was never without noise these days.

Now Toothless was standing in a clearing airbrushed by starlight, and someone he initially mistook for a white sheet more commonly seen hung from beams of wood on Berk during Dreadfall festivities could be seen moving in the untouched plant life in front of his unmoving forelegs. A gently writhing-- perhaps  _rousing-_ \- mass, with a long fin down the back and a pair of leathery wings that twinkled foreignly, flexing slightly and stirring the plants surrounding.

Toothless was gathering that he was looking at a dragon, but not one ever seen on Berk. Not one ever seen in the Red Death's nest or the Great Bewilderbeast's sanctuary of ice. Lying more or less  _still_  in a clearing that, while wide, was not a good place of vantage for snapping out your wings and taking flight should you be in any danger and need to retreat fast.

Did this stranger know this? Maybe they  _did_ know of the safe haven that was his and his rider's personal paradise, and took an unprecedented trip to their friendly archipelago like a vast majority of the others to find peace?

Either way, Toothless found himself drawing nearer, moving without needing to tell himself to, as if he were being tugged along by a magnet's irresistible pull. He stalled when he was seven feet away from stepping on a finned tail not unlike his own, and widened his eyes at the sight of a pair of short, keening ear flaps poking up. Ear flaps he could feel  _himself_ moving, familiarizing with the layout of this dragon's body the way he simply wasn't able to when looking at any of his wyvern friends; dragons who weren't built the same, because dragons who were built like him just never happened  _by_...

A shaded slit he didn't recognize to be an eyelid until it opened revealed a striking blue iris, and a pupil dilating with the discreet motion. Toothless didn't realize his mouth was hanging open in awe until, in an unexpectedly abrupt motion, the smooth-featured reptile braced their claws in the dirt and snapped around, teeth flashing in a huffing,  _hissing_  warning that made him all but fall over himself leaping back from in startlement, never taking his sight off the wrinkled nose or the eyes laying beside one another at such a distance that they lined up  _perfectly_ with his own.

Perhaps he had ventured too close for sneaking up. He conveyed his remorse with a curt nod of his head and a twist in direction, hyper aware of the fact that  **her**  eyes were on him now, quickly losing their hostile sheen but never leaving him despite this; trying to figure him out just as much as he was her.

A female, by her vocalizations and scent. It didn't concern him so much. It didn't even concern him the way she ambled briefly, and shook her frilled head as if in a daze not related to this meeting. What concerned him was the way she held herself in stocky poise, looking ready to slink away at a moment's notice; the whole tail swishing through the reeds behind her that resembled his own enough to make his heart flutter in disbelief shortly before association.

Her neck and head were held at level with her shoulders, and her wings were held above them at leisurely height, aimed unintentionally at the slightly thicker, wider muscle of his.

Her scales reminded him of the snowy crags of land he journeyed through with his boy a year ago; hid within and drew his musings into. Her eyes were like the sky at day. She looked nothing like him, so why could Toothless swear on his wings that he was looking at a clearer reflection of himself?

No dragon had ever come close to doing this. Toothless saw more of himself in  _Hiccup_  than he ever saw in other dragons-- on a spiritual  _and_ physical level, believe it or not. And while this marble-carved enigma of a dragon only mirrored him physically, it was a feat, through and through.

An amazing,  _amazing_  feat.

He had gotten so close to her, he could see himself in her eyes. She hadn't shied away. She glanced to her left only briefly before refocusing on him, her maw opening in questioning warble he was too stunned-- too lost in his lonely, processing mind he didn't ever think he could relate to or share with anyone else-- to hear.

It made it so he didn't react in the moment when her pupils narrowed and her teeth showed, a growl spurting free from her mouth right before she leaped into the air and shot a plasma blast straight over his head, alerting him more to the crunching of twigs and packed soil behind his back rather than the smashing, decimating contact her purple-tinted blast made with the tall, frond-heavy tree in the direction from which he skulked from.

He turned his head around with ears standing erect, hearing her spouting off snarls emanating  _protection_ and  _ **w**_ _ **e**_ _are in danger!_ But Toothless knew how ridiculous an assumption that was, and his theories regarding just  _who_ had happened by were confirmed when the wiry shapes of his friends-- his family-- stumbled out into the clearing, in front of the destroyed tree dripping with embers. Their gawking was evident, but Hiccup's expression was one of wonder while Astrid's was one of wariness, and the skittish, incensed whistle rising overhead quickly made him aware of why.

Another shot of plasma sounded off, and the blonde-haired woman had barely gotten a shout of warning out to Hiccup before she was tackling him to the forest floor, pushing him clear of the haphazard fire fully intent on snuffing the two of them out. They landed in a heap after twisting through the air, falling out of sight.

Fear for their safety snapped Toothless out of his marveling. The stranger dragon reared back onto her hind legs and heated up another blast. Toothless scored the dirt between them with his claws, calling her down in a way that pleaded more than commanded; using his voice with her for the very first time:  _You will_ _ **not**_ _hurt them!_

She dropped back onto all fours, stance matching his again. It wasn't to snarl in his face, but to look deep into his eyes again, confusion plain in hers.

The thoughts were making the shift from being  _just that_  to becoming vocalizations. That  _Berk is_ _ **good**_ _. Come with-_

But she wouldn't hear him, and did just as he had a feeling she was capable and lifted off, testing the ability to fly away fast in  _this_  clearing. Showcasing to him what he, himself, was capable. Mirroring it right back.

He watched with a tightness in his cool throat as she zeroed in on a tree trunk to spiral and used her wings to power herself up and out. Toothless was giving chase before he applied logic to it, tearing up the tall obstacle one claw hold after another and letting the logic come later. That  _she's_ _ **me**_ _! She's what_ _ **I am**_ _! We're the_ _ **same**_ _!_

He almost lost the moonlit gleam on her shimmering scales behind the leaves a few times, but she wasn't hard to spot for long. She used the tree as a guide without ever touching it and then relied on her wings from there on out. The top of it bowed under Toothless' weight once he reached it, with nothing but open night air separating the two of them now. The temperature dropped this high up.

She let loose another plasma blast and hurdled through the flare with tucked wings,  _vanishing_ into the sea of dark blue sky and millions of specs of stars, making him think momentarily that another branch had gotten in the way and was obstructing his view of her again. Leaving no trace of smoke in her wake. She was just... gone.

Toothless could only stare. At the last place she was, or where she  _would have been_ if he could still see her. The tree creaked and swayed under him, splintering in places. Shock. Sadness. Numbness.  _Where is she?_ _ **How**_ _is she?_

 _How am_   _ **I**?_

~-~

Toothless listened to the sound of his boy explaining their latest excursion without hearing it. He was sitting next to the wall in the hangar, tracing the shape of his shadow with his eyes.

It wasn't an exaggeration to say he didn't get much sleep the previous night...  _at first_. His tossing and turning had been subtle-- or so he thought. Hiccup groused awake after a particularly loud thud of his fidgety dragon's body on the bed he set up for him near the crackling hearth.

"This is about her, isn't it?" he had asked, to the relative silence of the hut they shared. Toothless didn't respond with his voice and stealthily moved to the bedside of his rider he so often assumed position by, startling him by dropping his heavy head into his lap.

Hiccup ran his deft hands over the top of Toothless' head and gently vented through his nose, speaking softly to him, "I know what it's like to finally find someone you can relate to, Bud. I did the day I met you." He dropped his cheek onto Toothless' brow, and both leaders closed their eyes in simple contentment brought about by each other's company. "But I  _have_  other humans to understand me, and me them. You..."

His pause had perturbed Toothless, who hummed and lifted his head almost quick enough to send Hiccup rocking back against his headboard with an uppercut to the chin. He stuck out his forked tongue and pressed a massive kiss to his rider's face, figuring it would help unstick his lips.

" _Aaargh_!" Hiccup flinched back, immediately lifting his forearm to wipe the spit off. "Okay! Fine! You convinced me!"

Toothless hadn't known what he meant at the time. His head lowered onto the top of the blanket again as Hiccup delivered some well-placed scratches across his itchy neck, relaxing against the bed with slumping shoulders and closing his eyes to the sound of his boy's voice saying, "Rest easy, Bud. As soon as I get everything on my to-do list done tomorrow, we're heading back out there. I promise..."

Now, as events were discussed in the hangar between the humans and Toothless donned his saddle once again, he unfurled his wings to stare at his shadow on the wall at a different angle, smile gummy, knowing it wasn't just a hope in his heart of hearts anymore that there was another out there who could make one shaped similar to his. That he, too, could perhaps have dragons who understood him, and he them.

"Okay," he heard Hiccup say somewhere behind him. The sound of a large pair of tweezers hitting the rock floor snapped the Berkian Alpha out of his avid musings as the Viking chief stood up. "I can't bear to look at this anymore. We're going  _now_."

Toothless turned, feeling an immediate spike of embarrassment for his actions-- reinforced by the many sets of eyes belonging to those of his  _flock_ staring at him in bewilderment. Two huge, winged forelegs plodded past on curved hooks, and a pair of amber eyes glared down the onlookers until they moved on, forgetting what they had seen. Cloudjumper settled his piercing gaze on Toothless after that, mellowing and becoming considerably  _less_ piercing as he tipped his giant head respectfully to him.

"Don't worry. We'll find her. You'll see her again," Hiccup said, laying a hand over Toothless' snout in steady reassurance. Toothless pushed back against the touch with eyes that slipped shut endearingly again, forever grateful for the understanding company he already kept.


End file.
